Before I can record episode #40, I had to get the audio version out for the previous episode (whoops!). So here it is. If you're subscribed to the audio podcast, this episode should show up for you soon. It's a barely edited version of the video's audio, so if you've seen the streamed version, there's nothing new here. This podcast featured video of my screen as I scrolled through news stories on the site, so I may refer to things without describing them.

This was a recap episode covering mostly what happened in the previous few months since the last podcast. I took questions and comments from the live audience rather than pre-selected email questions this time.

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Show Notes

Just a quick post today. 12 years ago today, the Krystal Archive came online for the first time. It's been through a lot: four or five designs, a major hack, interviews with voice actresses and industry insiders, and more Krystal news and fan works than you can shake a stick at! It's been awesome, and I have a lot planned for the coming year. Thank you all for continuing to visit and contribute to this site, and more importantly, our lovely blue vixen.

With that said, I really wanted to do a podcast for the occasion. Unfortunately, some health issues suddenly got in the way. I will try to get that done as soon as I can. In the meantime, let's celebrate! It's a new year full of possibilities and great things to come.

GoldenFox51 sends in this picture from Garry's Mod for the celebration.

Game musician Dinnick the 3rd has created a lovely little cover of the Cape Claw theme from Star Fox Adventures. It features guitar, xylophone, and even an ocarina. For the chorus, he created new lyrics.

What does this song have to do with Krystal? Great question. Turns out, Krystal's theme makes up part of this song. Plus, it's just really really good!

You can listen to the whole album, and purchase it for whatever price you think is fair, on the Album Bandcamp Page.

There are other Star Fox works he's done. There's this awesome Corneria Cover from the classic Star Fox for the SNES. Then you can sample his electronic cover of Swapstone Hollow from the unreleased Dinosaur Planet.

Up-and-coming fursuit maker, Sweet Roll Fursuits has just completed a Krystal fursuit on commission after a year of work.

The suit comes with a complete foam head (including jewelry), bodysuit, tail, footpaws with sandals, gloves, armor, clothing, and even Krystal's staff (no pictures of that yet). No idea about who the buyer is, though we'll probably see this suit "in the wild" sooner rather than later.

Sweet Roll Fursuits has also done a Fox McCloud fursuit head in the past, as well as Falco and Fox costumes. According to her commission page, she is open for commissions with 4 slots available right now, though that information might be out of date. Since this is a new fursuit maker, the prices are extremely good, especially considering the quality and quantity of what you get for the price. If you're interested in a fursuit or other large costume, consider Sweet Roll Fursuits.

PS - Sorry I missed posting yesterday. I'm going to do another post right away.

Here they are, the 4K and original resolution versions of the Honeymoon cutscene in Japanese. I explained in a previous post the serious technical challenges to create these videos.

With the planet Sauria saved once again, Fox and Krystal enjoy the company of an old friend, Tricky. In these versions, you can clearly see the lipsyncing working better. These pre-rendered cutscenes were not modified for the localization, with one known exception. Enjoy!

SchattenKitsune666 decided to do another MMD video with Krystal because a lot of folks were asking for more with her singing. This took 11 hours to fully render. This is HBR102989's rig, which he returned to after not using it for some time. The song is Sayonara by Tiara.

Thanks to GoldenFox51 for the heads up!

I've completed my week long break, and traveled back home after visiting family for Christmas. I hope you all had safe trips if you were traveling.

2017 was a fantastic year for the Krystal Archive! For the first time, the Krystal Archive began releasing regular posts, usually at least once per day, for weeks at a time. We also, FINALLY, got to play Star Fox 2 officially for the first time with the announcement and release of the SNES Classic. The Krystal Archive now has an active Discord server where I talk with you guys every day and we collaborate on projects. And there was so much more!

Now, 2018 is upon us! The things that were accomplished in 2017 will only expand in the coming year. I have quite a few plans. Some big, some small, which I will talk about a bit in the next podcast which I plan to release on the Krystal Archive's 12th anniversary on January 8th (next Monday).

Thank you all for a great year. I hope you and I both can create great resolutions for the new year, and then accomplish them.

Before we get to the exciting conclusion of Star Fox Assault, let's take a step back and look at THE most requested Star Fox Assault cutscene. I figure it's as good a Krystmas present as any!

This is the now-famous Honeymoon cutscene, where Fox and Krystal meet up with a grown-up Tricky after fighting off the Aparoid threat on Sauria together. Tricky mades a casual mention that Fox and Krystal should come back for their honeymoon. Fox reacts with embarrassment, while Krystal laughs at his plight.

As some of you know, Star Fox Assault features several pre-rendered cutscenes. There are ten, I think. Even though the cutscenes appear to use the in-game engine, for whatever reason, they implemented these scenes as 30 frame per second, heavily compressed video, at a mere 640 by 336 resolution. But they did even worse, because that 30fps video is set to run at 60fps, doubling each frame. Except for some parts of the video that is running at less than 30fps, yet still displayed as 60fps video. Then, the video got vertically stretched to make it slightly taller. The compression they used left very big artifacts on the screen too.

What can we do about this? First, instead of recording the video off the screen, I instead pulled individual frames of video as textures. This allowed me the pure data of each video frame: no stretching, skips, or duplicates. This had the added bonus of showing more of the video, because some sections during fade-outs are handled by the game, not by the video frames.

Next, I tried all sorts of different high quality upscaling techniques. I tried every scaling filter ffmpeg has trying to find the best one, which turned out to be 'bicublin'. I also researched some paid upscalers. Ultimately, thanks to some advice from juiceps, I rediscovered a project from 2015: waifu2x.

Waifu2x is a GPU accelerated image upscaler that uses Neural Networks to increase the resolution of an image, particularly drawn images, without losing detail. The idea started with a Chinese research paper, Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks. From there, it was implemented as open source software by nagadomi from Japan. There is even a project for automating and bulk-processing the upscaling technique with fully customizable settings with the project waifu2x-caffe. Visually, the technique has the effect of detected edges, and redrawing them as sharp lines, then taking everything else and smoothing the gradient of color so that they appear clean and free of artifacts. Waifu2x is FAR better than any other upscaler I've ever seen.

Here's what the process was like:

1. Record the frames using frame dumping (also record the audio and the cutscene normally as a video to match against
2. Use ImageMagick to bulk crop out the subtitle section, leaving the visual frames
3. Run all the cropped frames through waifu2x-caffe, using the upRGB algorithm at Level 2 strength, and scaling the image up by 600% to make it 4K width (this process takes approximately 6 hours per 1 minute of footage)
4. Use FFMPEG to convert the frame images into a 30fps video at 4K resolution
5. Import the video into Final Cut Pro and edit it using the original recordings as a guide, doing any necessary frame speed retiming
6. Finally export as a h.264 high quality video

Needless to say, this is a tremendous amount of work for each video. That's why they take so much longer than the other kinds like briefings and other scenes. But I have it figured out now, so future videos of this type should be coming more quickly.

For the 4K version, I removed the subtitles, since there wouldn't be much room for them anyway. However, I also made an original version, below. It uses the frames at exactly the same resolution as they exist in the game data, so it's maximum resolution is 640 by 480. I did record slightly higher resolution subtitles, though. Also, the frame timing and fades are better here than in the real game video. But put this video in full screen, and then compare it to the 4K version. The difference is staggering!

I will post the Japanese version of these scenes soon. But for now, I'm going to take a break for the rest of this week to celebrate Christmas and New Years. I hope you will also take some time to relax, hang with family, and reflect on the year past. See you in 2018!

Hey friends! Merry Christmas to you and yours this year. I hope you all are spending time with family and friends. Before I make the next post with your present, I just wanted to say that it's been a great year running the Krystal Archive and I've loved seeing your participation and fan works. Thank you all!

After the next post, I will be taking a break from posting until New Years. I hope you all will have an opportunity to rest and prepare for 2018 as well.

Artwork by AvaikaofStarfox, used with permission.

I have a gift for all of you that I'm excited to give you on Christmas day. So be sure to check in on Monday. Meanwhile, Christmas Eve is tomorrow and I still have a lot of prep for family get-togethers. I wish you all a Merry Christmas if I don't get to talk to you in the next few days.

The very festive Krystmas photo from Ayano Harumaki is from the 2016 Ayano Krystmas Photoshoot.